Cell Phone Ban in City Schools Not There Yet But Could Happen

A cell phone ban in all city public schools may happen, but the process is going slower than anticipated. And its not clear if the conditions for a ban set by the powerful United Federation of Teachers will speed up the process or slow it down, even as 63 percent of teachers say they support a ban.

“We’re not there yet.”

That was how Mayor Eric Adams responded on Aug. 27 when asked if a much talked about ban on cell phones in the city’s public schools was going to happen at the start of the school year. It was a surprising sign that he was hitting the brakes on an all encompassing ban even as nearly half the schools in the system have put in their own individual bans.

Only two months before Adams hit the brakes, Education Chancellor David Banks had indicated a ban in the 2024-25 school year was imminent. And Governor Kathy Hochul in a question and answer session at the Hearst Town in New York City in late July said she would play the heavy and lead the charge statewide.

Adams, speaking to reporters at his weekly media availability a month later said he wants more time to study it.

Then in mid-September, the city’s powerful United Federation of Teachers released the results of a survey which said 63 percent of its members supported a ban. But the conditions, including a desire that teachers not be the primary enforcers of any ban, could certainly complicate matters.

New attention was focused on the debate on September 12 when Brandeis High School on the Upper West Side went on lockdown after a report of an active shooter in the school that ultimately turned out to be unfounded. Heavily armored NYPD officers and emergency service workers charged to the school which was among the individual schools in the city that had its own cell phone ban in place.

While parents and guardians that day were notified quickly that the school was on lockdown, many parents were upset that for more than an hour they were unable to contact their kids directly because the kids did not have cell phones available to them.

One mother who had a daughter at the school told am New York that the incident highlighted the importance of letting kids keep their cell phones with them at all times while in school.

“They should be able to keep their phones, period,” she told am NY. “I don’t care what school it is.”

That puts Adams in a tough position. ”Our desire is we should not have any distractions in our schools,” he said at the late August press conference. “And the number one distraction, not only to students but even as I look around this room, some of you are deep in your phones. We are hooked on our phones and we want to get it right. We want to remove any distraction from our children.”

”Right now there are some schools that already have bans,” he said. “But once you use the terminology that it is a full ban coming from the chancellor, there’s a lot of things that will kick into play, including [United Federation of Teachers], who pays for the pouches, what mechanisms are being used. So we’ve been doing a lot of reviews.” And he said that review includes keeping an eye on the nation’s second biggest public school system in Los Angeles which instituted its own ban this school year.

He continued, “What are the best practices? How could it be done? There will be some action in the upcoming school year. But the extend of a full ban, we’re not there yet.”

Education Chancellor David Banks in late June strongly hinted that the cell phone ban was imminent. “You’re going to hear, within the next two weeks, the big announcement, but I will tell you we are very much leaning towards banning cellphones,” Banks said on June 26, according to Chalkbeat.org, a not for profit news service that covers the city’s public schools.

Adams said: “We’re learning from those who are doing it. Because we do have schools in the city who are doing it on their own. And so we want to make sure we get it right....And we’re going to learn from people like L.A. and other places.”

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said city educators could support a citywide ban on student cell phones provided four key safeguards are part of any new city policy:

*Educators are not the first or sole line of enforcement.

*The NYC Department of Education’s central bureaucracy pays for the cost, not individual schools.

*Enforcement is consistent, fair, and uniform.

*Schools have emergency contact lines set up for parents.

“Teachers know first-hand that cell phones waste classroom time and threaten students’ mental and physical health,” Mulgrew said. “We don’t want a ban that wastes more instructional time by having individual educators asked to collect every class’s cell phones, or has school communities having to choose between buying new lab equipment or cell phone pouches and lockers,” Mulgrew said.

“Parents need to be brought into the discussions, so they feel comfortable with any changes,” he said.

Mulgrew said his conclusions came after a snapshot cell phone survey of teachers and other members in July and early August which received 3,685 responses from 1,175 schools.

Among the conclusions: Sixty three percent of the teachers polled supported a citywide ban with 31 percent opposed and 6 percent neutral.

The DOE does not have figures on how many schools actually have existing cell phone bans. But in a surprise development, the UFT survey found nearly half of all schools, 49 percent of those polled, already had a ban of some sort in place.

But the survey also noted that among schools that had bans, only 38 percent called the ban a success while 40 percent said it was a failure.

On the other hand, 70 percent of educators in schools that already have a ban said they would support a citywide prohibition, the UFT said.

Educators who called their own school’s cell phone ban a failure blamed a lack of planning and organization. For elementary schools, keeping phones in backpacks and turned off worked best, according to the survey results.